Dear Co-pastors in Prayer,

While working as a chaplain at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), I attempted to provide pastoral care to patients who had suffered various kinds of loss. In addition to overseeing a small staff of chaplains, I was responsible for the spinal cord injury unit, where five dozen patients received a host of therapeutic treatments addressing a wide diversity of impairments. While all my patients were temporary residents of RIC because of shared damage to their spinal cords, no two injuries were alike; even when two patients shared similar injury and impairment, no two patients experienced their trauma in the same way. 

Without exception, however, all of my patients were undertaking two contradictory projects: they were all working hard to recover, and they were all, in some way, grieving. One might assume that the depth of grief would be proportional to the extent of injury, that those who were left with quadriplegic impairment would be grieving deeper than those who were recovering from mild disruption to their balance or gait. But the depth of grief was largely unrelated to their diagnosis.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance were present in some form for all of my patients regardless of prognosis, but the deepest agony was expressed by those who had experienced not only a loss of function, but a loss of self. Their injury(ies) not only dissed their ability but also dissed their identity. A chess-playing bookkeeper newly confined to a wheelchair had a significantly different response to impairment than did a truck-driving triathlete. My work as a chaplain was to foster a sense of reconciliation between who the patient thought they were before their injury, and who they were going to become.

Three decades later, many of these conversations still haunt me. Robert, who lost both arms in a high-speed printing press. Angela, who became a quadriplegic when a gravel truck rear ended her car on the day she graduated from flight attendant school. Larry, who was working on the Alaskan pipeline when a transformer exploded while he was inside. Alice, who would never walk again after her car rolled over on a gravel road while she was trying to swat a bee that had flown in her window. All these witnesses would spend a lifetime recalibrating their identity, their meaning and their purpose. 

Of course, my continued prayers for them are sealed in the time-capsule of our brief encounters over 30 years ago, but nearly every day I wonder how they are doing... Are they coping? Are they whole? Have they found peace from an identity rooted in God’s unconditional love expressed in Christ? Because my take-away from those days of chaplaincy was the profound difference God’s love makes regardless of our loss, regardless of our grief.

We all experience loss; it is the human condition. We all work hard, adapting to the best of our abilities. But in the gap between hoped-for recovery and experienced impairment, we grieve. The only thing that can fill that gap is God’s boundless and unwavering love, reminding us that we are precious, we are whole, we are His.

Musing in prayer over those who have experienced loss, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor